Big Beer Merger Will Create One Giant Megabrewer

mug of beer

Soon, when you grab a beer with friends, even if each of you orders a different brand, there’s a pretty good chance they’ll all be made by the same brewer.

The recently announced $106 billion acquisition of SABMiller (which currently makes Coors, Miller, Blue Moon, Hamm’s, Leinenkugel, Grolsch, Peroni and many others) by Anheuser-Busch InBev (Budweiser, Corona, Stella Artois, Beck’s, Leffe, Hoegaarden and many others) means that
almost one-third — roughly 30 percent — of all beer sold across the globe will be made by a single massive company.

The
giant combined enterprise will take in about $64 billion annually and make Anheuser-Busch InBev, already the world’s biggest beer maker, substantially bigger, as it swallows what was the globe’s second-largest brewer.

However, in order to get the deal past regulators, SABMiller has decided to sell its part ownership of MillerCoors, including the global rights to Miller beer, to its partner in that enterprise, Molson Coors Brewing, for $12 billion — a transfer of ownership that will turn Molson Coors into the second-largest U.S. brewer, The New York Times reports.

There’s also the matter of what to call a company that will combine — as the website Pop Namer puts it — “two nearly-unpronounceable, acronym-name hybrids into one tipsy-turvy behemoth.” The naming site is
polling the public to find the perfect moniker. Currently atop the robust list of suggested names: Monopolager, MegaKega, Beerhemouth, Barley Legal, Macrobrewery and MegaLager, with Globev, Bevy and AbSab close behind. Fun.

Cold beer just tastes better during the hot, steamy summertime. Light beers get a bad wrap on the flavor front, so we tested five popular brands (including the most requested ones from our Facebook fans) to see which brew tasted best. It was a hard job, but someone had to do it! Check out how your favorite brand measured up.